4:20 PM,
Oct. 2, 2013

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends placing babies to sleep in the same room as the caregiver, but not in the same bed.

Written by

Michelle Healy, USA TODAY

The number of infants who sleep in a bed with an adult or another child has doubled over the past 17 years - a troubling development given research showing that bed sharing increases an infant's risk of death from sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) or other sleep-related causes, such as accidental suffocation and entrapment in bedding material, says a new government-funded study.

The increase was most notable among African-American infants, according to the study reported Monday in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.

Overall, the percentage of nighttime caregivers who reported that an ...